Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Presstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-14005452015-12-31T13:18:10-05:00Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.TypePadThe Broadside’s Greatest Hits: 2015 in Reviewtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b8d187f375970c2015-12-31T13:18:10-05:002015-12-31T13:18:10-05:002015 has been, to say the least, rather momentous, and continues to be as it draws to a close. We at Beacon Press are so grateful to our brilliant authors who have offered their time and insights to analyze and comment on this year's events. Their posts—with topics ranging from race to cultural or class dynamics and to the environment—have been, if you will, a true beacon for the Broadside. Before we bid farewell to 2015, we would like to share a collection of some our most-read posts. This list is by no means exhaustive. Make sure to peruse our archives. You can expect to see more thought-provoking essays and commentary from our contributors in 2016. Happy New Year!Beacon Broadside

2015 has been, to say the least, rather momentous, and continues to be as it draws to a close. We at Beacon Press are so grateful to our brilliant authors who have offered their time and insights to analyze and comment on this year's events. Their posts—with topics ranging from race to cultural or class dynamics and to the environment—have been, if you will, a true beacon for the Broadside. Before we bid farewell to 2015, we would like to share a collection of some our most-read posts. This list is by no means exhaustive. Make sure to peruse our archives. You can expect to see more thought-provoking essays and commentary from our contributors in 2016. Happy New Year!

Dunbar-Ortiz’s American Book Award-winning An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States chronicles four centuries of Native Americans actively resisting expansion of the US empire, colonialism, and the attendant structural injustices. Colonialism and its legacy of injustices, however, are still a part of the present as much as they are a part of our country’s past. In May, the new and admired Pope Francis announced the canonization of Junípero Serra, thereby venerating European colonization and genocide. Dunbar-Ortiz implores us to celebrate the insurgent actions of California’s Indigenous nations against Serra’s totalitarian order, not the oppressor.

For Nura Maznavi, attorney, writer, and co-editor of Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex & Intimacy, Ramadan was a time when, as a child, she could pretend to be an adult. She insisted on fasting the entire month starting at the age of seven. Ramadan became more challenging as the years went on, but she never missed a day of fasting—until she became pregnant. This year, the second time around, Maznavi didn’t fast because she was nursing, and she didn’t feel bad about it. She found other ways of feeling the Ramadan spirit.

When you’re a new teacher, or one with years of experience, and you’re faced with disobedient children, unfriendly administrators, shortages of supplies, and demanding parents, how do you avoid the besieged teacher trap? How do you work with the pressures and expectations of the classroom while cultivating the practice of figuring out how your students can enjoy their time together more, how they can take on the wider world with curiosity, creativity, and zest? Robert Fried, author of The Passionate Teacher, lays out the foundation for educators to become the passionate teacher they want to be, the kind who can’t wait to get into the classroom.

Robert Oswald and Michelle Bamberber, authors of The Real Cost of Fracking, pored over all of one thousand pages of the EPA’s long-awaited study on the effects of hydraulic fracturing in the United States. News reports of the study claimed that fracturing was safe and did not jeopardize our water and water resources. Given the study’s wide coverage in the media, how did so many news outlets get the story so wrong? Well, as Oswald and Bamberger explain, only a select few actually read the study. Not only do they point us to specific details in the report about the dangers of fracking on our water, they also review the aftermath of the misinformation fed to the masses.

The publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was, by and large, one of this year’s highly anticipated—and controversial—cultural milestones. Readers who had fallen in love with Atticus Finch as the heroic savior in To Kill a Mockingbird were shocked when confronted with an altogether contrary characterization of the man who had stood for racial justice. In Watchman, Lee gives us his back-story and shows Atticus as he always was, a lawyer groomed for white supremacy and racism in the Jim Crow South. Whitlock and Bronski, authors of Considering Hate, examine how and why Lee’s frank portrayal of Atticus challenges the white American literary imagination.

Texas made the headlines in October when schools across the state put some dodgy textbooks from McGraw-Hill Education on their curricula. The geography textbooks referred to African slaves as “workers” and completely downplayed slave owners’ brutal treatment of slaves with other linguistic sleights of hand. They, in effect, whitewashed American slavery history. What’s most disconcerting about this is that the textbooks were approved for Texas high schools. We at Beacon reached out to our authors who have written about American Slavery history to ask them for corrective reading. With recommendations from Mary Frances Berry, Thomas Norman DeWolf, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Anita Hill, Sharon Leslie Morgan, and Marcus Rediker, we were able to put together a robust list.

AwkwardMan: One Man's Journey From Brokenhearted Solitude to a Happy Life in Lovetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c74a71ab970b2015-02-13T14:30:00-05:002015-02-13T14:58:36-05:00I often think awkwardness is my superpower. No one else I know has such a deft way of turning an ordinary situation into a hot mess of confusion and apprehension. People have noticed—particularly at work, where I seem to bumble my way through meetings and pleasantries with high-powered executives.Beacon Broadside

I often think awkwardness is my superpower. No one else I know has such a deft way of turning an ordinary situation into a hot mess of confusion and apprehension. People have noticed—particularly at work, where I seem to bumble my way through meetings and pleasantries with high-powered executives.

When I tell people I work in online marketing, I usually get a confused response: they assume that I work from home in a get-rich-quick scheme or that I’m spamming their e-mail address about performance-enhancing drugs. It’s still a fairly new field, and it doesn’t yet have much cachet because there hasn’t been a television series to glamorize it.

In one of my many attempts to legitimize my life’s work, I started a job in Los Angeles with the hopes of turning the phrase “I work in online marketing” into “I am an executive at a marketing firm.” However, my inner AwkwardMan took over and sabotaged me before I could get a firm grip on the corporate ladder.

“That’s a good-looking coffee cup,” said the CEO of the company as I arrived last to my first significant meeting.

As a deafening silence fell over the conference room full of important people, I realized that my humor did not translate well to this audience.

I like to think that AwkwardMan could be a new superhero—maybe not one invited to the same parties as Batman and Superman, but definitely part of the nerdy group that includes Quailman and Captain Planet. I imagine that my superhero cape would be just a little too long and loose fitting, something that would get caught in a doorway as I made my triumphant entrance to catch the bad guys. Then, as I stumbled clear, it would rip in half. Not to be deterred, I’d attempt to halt them with a catchy and powerful tagline, but mispronounce a word or have trouble projecting the phrase loudly enough, and they’d stop briefly, struggling to understand what I’d said. “AwkwardMan Inconveniences Bad Guys!” would be my signature headline in the newspapers.

I wasn’t always so uneasy in social settings. In fact, for most of my life I enjoyed meeting new people. I moved to the United States from England when I was fourteen and quickly found that having an English accent had many benefits—people seemed to like talking to me, regardless of what I was actually saying. It’s much easier to start conversations with new people when you know that at some point they will use the phrase “I love your accent.” That kind of instant validation made socializing less daunting to a natural introvert.

It was only during the last couple of years—after a hurtful breakup with a woman I nearly married—that I developed an intense unease. To say that my self-confidence was affected by the breakup would be an understatement. To this day, no words have taken as intense an emotional toll as when my then-fiancée said: “You are a horrible person, I hate you, and I hope you never hurt another girl the way that you hurt me.”

That sentence reverberated in my heart, destroying my self-image. I had always imagined myself to be a kind person who went out of his way to help others. But if the person I nearly married could say that about me, maybe I didn’t know who I was after all. Maybe I was a bad person. Maybe I was kidding myself that I could be in a healthy relationship, or even a friendship with anyone, because I would only end up hurting them. This internalization was the birth of AwkwardMan.

Confidence and self-esteem were aspects of my personality that I only fully appreciated when I could no longer feel them. I changed from a person comfortable talking to new people to one preoccupied with self-doubt in every interaction. At one social gathering a few months after the breakup, I was so nervous that I spilled my plate of food three times. My existing network of friends were close with both me and my ex-fiancée and, not wanting to cause any issues, I withdrew from that crowd, preferring the comfort of my own company rather than having to answer questions about what had happened between us.

As I withdrew from social circles, AwkwardMan flourished. Life became very lonely—although I did start a great friendship with my Roomba robot vacuum. He was a friendly little guy, working away on the carpet on Friday nights as I heated up frozen pizza and complained about what had happened at work that week. Roomba was a great listener.

My apartment slowly turned into its own fortress of solitude. Aside from work, I only ventured out to play in a local pickup soccer game on the weekends. I even renamed my Wi-Fi network Quantum of Solace as a passive plea in the hopes that my neighbors might want to hang out. They didn’t.

When an old friend came into town and insisted we go out to eat so that I could meet his wife, I went out for the first time in months. It turned out to be an entertaining night, made easier by pleasant company and good food. I had awkward moments, but the conversation flowed well enough that they weren’t too apparent.

However, the next day highlighted the extent of my isolation. My credit card company called me in the morning.

“Sir, we have some unusual activity on your card—can you verify these charges?” The caller then proceeded to list all of the previous night’s charges.

“Yes, those are good. Anything else?” I replied.

“No, that was all the unusual activity we found. Thank you, your card’s temporary suspension has been lifted.”

I couldn’t help but laugh after the call ended. I knew my credit card company’s fraud monitoring system had a sophisticated algorithm to protect accounts. If I suddenly used my card in a new city they would call me. Or, if I made a huge purchase, I would get an alert. But this time, I triggered an alarm because the company calculated that based on my purchase habits, there was little likelihood that I would be out on a Friday evening, let alone getting sushi and crepes. By their logic, it had to have been someone else.

That was a turning point. I knew things had to change.

Reflecting on my postbreakup life, I realized I had actively isolated myself, punishing myself for everything that had happened in the relationship. While I was to blame for certain things, we shared responsibility for many of our problems. The hurt of my ex’s last words still lingered, making me doubt that I deserved good things. However, after a year of nights at home with Roomba, and after my credit card company decided that going out on a Friday night was completely out of character, I realized I needed to start saying yes more often. I needed to relive those old days when I was genuinely excited by the company of others. I even resolved to exaggerate my English accent, if needed.

AwkwardMan didn’t like this rejuvenated spirit. He struggled with and fought me at every step, whispering that I didn’t deserve to have any fun or that I was a horrible person. At times, I listened and gave in, but mainly I pushed on, spurred by my new goal of spending one day per week in a social setting. I reconnected with old friends (who were happy to see me again), found groups of young Muslims to hang out with, and attended events where I managed not to make a fool of myself. Friday nights, once dedicated to video game marathons, might find me instead at a Star Wars concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I went from sleeping in on Saturday mornings until noon to driving to Orange County at 8 a.m. to volunteer at a food bank. Slowly, I rebuilt my social circle. It was difficult, and talking to new people still held some challenges, but it ended up being more worthwhile than I ever could have imagined.

Here’s what happened: I was meeting a new friend, Muna, at the mall, where we were planning to catch a movie. Initially, I couldn’t find Muna in the crowd. When I finally did, I joked that her new workout routine was so effective that when she turned sideways she disappeared. Don’t worry, she didn’t laugh either. Another victory for AwkwardMan!

Muna let it pass and brought me over to say a quick hello to a group of her friends that I hadn’t met before. Like every great comedian, I used the same material again on these young ladies, thinking my obvious charm and good looks would carry the joke successfully this time. They did not.

As yet another awkward silence lingered in the air, my winning smile deteriorated from delighted, to polite, and finally to sullen. I had struck out before the night had even begun. As we left to watch our movie, Muna made fun of me for trying the same lame joke twice. “Seriously dude, you are just not smooth. Better get on the aunty connection quick because you need help.”

It was true. I needed divine intervention if I was going to be successful with the ladies. To AwkwardMan’s delight, we ran into the same group of friends again after the movie. I wasn’t stupid enough to try humor as an icebreaker again, so I kept it simple this time, using techniques I learned after Googling “How to talk like a normal person and not be weird.”

I had noticed Zaiba right away. She was beautiful and had a good vibe: cool and down-to-earth. After the movie, as we all stood around talking, I happened to find myself next to her. Without overthinking it, I asked her and her friend if they were going to get dessert with the rest of the group. But, as the large group struggled to select a place, Muna and Zaiba’s friends decided to go back to Muna’s apartment.

“Want to tag along?” asked Muna.

“Yes. Yes I do,” I said, in accordance with my recent resolution.

AwkardMan was kept rigorously in check that evening. Somehow, by the grace of the Big Man himself, I was able to start conversations with simple opening lines. And to my surprise, this continued successfully for the next couple of hours.

“You went to the same college as me? The same major? At the same time?” These were the highlights of my first conversation with Zaiba. AwkwardMan wanted to shout, “Where were you this whole time, you lovely person?!” Thankfully he mostly stood aside, only briefly making an appearance when, after talking for a while, I asked Zaiba how she spelled her name—my go-to question when I forget a person’s name but am too embarrassed to admit it. I hadn’t really been listening when we first chatted—she was distractingly good looking and I was busy thinking of the next half-interesting thing I could say to keep the conversation flowing.

“Z-a-i-b-a? That’s so close to my name!” I said excitedly.

“Uh-huh, you mentioned that when we met earlier this evening,” Zaiba replied.

Ah, AwkwardMan, you’ve had your bit of fun. Now please retire for the evening, I pleaded.

Zaiba seemed a little too good to be true. Beautiful, smart, funny, and willing to talk to me? This looks promising, I thought to myself. When this had happened in the past, my mind had quickly moved from “This girl is cool” to “I should definitely marry her, my whole life has been leading up to this point, don’t screw it up!” That would generally be when AwkwardMan would appear and I would screw it up. But Zaiba was so easy to talk to that I just felt like myself. She made conversations easy and fun.

The next day, Muna asked me if I’d had a good time the previous night, with a raised eyebrow and wink. That’s when I realized it was all part of a setup, casual but effective.

“Zaiba is really cool. We should hang out with her again,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah?” she replied. “A few of us were having lunch next weekend if you want to join us.” Again, I said yes.

Saying yes was starting to become a habit in all areas of my life. Yes, I will go to lunch. Yes, I will take on that new project at work that I don’t have any experience in. Yes, this girl is cool and interesting. And yes, I like her and want to get to know her better.

After lunch the next week we decided to walk around the mall. Muna and her friend walked a little bit ahead of us as Zaiba and I chatted. We were having a great conversation when out of nowhere we began talking about soccer and I insisted on showing her a cell phone picture of my new cleats.

“They’re black on black!” I pointed out.

Zaiba politely agreed that they were indeed an excellent choice. A moment later, I realized what had just happened. AwkwardMan had made an appearance. No girl should be subjected to an extended conversation about the benefits of Adidas Predator soccer cleats, their history, and the list of famous players who wear them. But Zaiba hadn’t reacted with a weird look or a shocked response. She accepted my awkwardness warmly, never made me feel stupid, and carried on as though things were normal.

I asked if she wanted to hang out together soon afterward. And, when that went well, we hung out again. Then, I randomly called her on the phone while she was out of town and soon we were hanging out often and talking every day. Each time we saw each other it felt a little better than the last. Within a few months, I realized I’d fallen completely in love with her. I loved her sense of calm, the way she treated her friends and family with such importance, and the care and effort she made in those relationships. I loved our conversations and the fact that AwkwardMan no longer had to be a secret identity. He was a part of me, and I finally accepted him as a personality quirk.

There were moments when we talked about my past, about how it had altered my outlook on life and how I was still in some ways rebuilding myself. But I was well on my way to a complete recovery, especially since Zaiba accepted me as I was, AwkwardMan and all. It was the most cared for I’d ever felt. For the first time in a long time, I allowed a good thing to happen to me.

Exactly a year after we first met, I took Zaiba to the place where we had had our first dinner. We ate our shawarmas, grabbed a selection of cupcakes, and headed over to Seal Beach. As we sat down, I took out something from the picnic basket I had brought with me. It was a jigsaw puzzle made up of photographs from our year together, including ones of an evening cruise around Newport Harbor, our fantastic time at Griffith Observatory, and the time I took her to see an LA Galaxy soccer game.

As Zaiba started piecing the puzzle together, I thought about how selecting the photos had given me a deep appreciation of our relationship. As she finished, I took out the last two pieces of the puzzle from my pocket. I said the words written on the pieces as I completed the puzzle: “Will you marry me?”

It was the moment my life had been building up to—as though the pain I had experienced was just one part of the Big Man’s carefully designed plan. That pain made me grateful for the woman who accepted me as I was, and with whom I could share conversations, uncontrollable laughter, and even some lovely and awkward moments.

Zaiba was the missing piece in the puzzle of my life, and I loved her dearly. I waited, wanting to hear the same word that had changed my life and taken me from brokenhearted solitude to a happy life.

She said yes.

About the Author

Zain Omar grew up in Leicester, England, and San Diego, California. He studied management science at the University of California, San Diego, and currently works in the online marketing industry in Los Angeles. In his free time, Zain likes to spend time with his lovely wife, play soccer (both on the PlayStation and in real life), and hang out with friends and family.

#RamadanReads: Changing the Conversation about Muslims, One Book at a Timetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301a511e61a7c970c2014-07-21T17:00:00-04:002014-07-21T16:46:45-04:00Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi, editors of 'Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy,' recommend six groundbreaking titles as part of the #RamadanReads campaign, a “book buying revolution” meant to celebrate and support diverse and divergent stories and storytellers in the Muslim community.Beacon Broadside

If representation is homogenous, then it is inaccurate. Yet, Muslims are daily portrayed and perceived as a monolith—in spite of there being 1.6 billion Muslims spread out over 56 countries, dozens of ethnic groups, and a multitude of legal and cultural practices.

Jennifer Zobair’s debut fiction novel Painted Hands is an engaging and provocative novel about friendship and the love lives of American Muslim Women. Can two ambitious Muslim women juggle two cultures, high powered careers, and unexpected love interests—including a right-wing talk radio host—to have it all?

A New York Times notable book of the year, G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen is a gripping tale about a computer hacker in hot pursuit by forces seen and unseen after he discovers a secret book of the jinn.

Far too many translations of the mystic poets of Islam are by people who don’t know the original language. Gray rectifies this with her thorough knowledge of Persian and the Persian poetic tradition to present a gorgeous book on the preeminent poet of love, Persian Sufism, and one of the great poets of world literature: Hafiz.

Columbia University social scientist Abu-Lughod deconstructs the idea of saving oppressed Muslim women and takes a sobering look at the issues that Westerners almost exclusively focus on—including honor crimes, arranged marriages, the burqa, and veiling. In clear, lucid prose, she invites the reader to look more deeply at their own perceptions versus the realities of Muslim women. Anyone seriously interested in Muslim women’s rights needs to read this book.

The authors examine how women have interpreted and navigated the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) gender ideologies and practices, illuminating the experiences of African-American, Latina, and Native American Muslim women within the NOI, and their changing roles over time. A fascinating look at an expression of Islam sensitive to American cultural messages about race and gender, but also to gender and race ideals in the Islamic tradition, from the civil rights movement to the present day.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ayesha Mattu is a writer and international development consultant. She lives in San Francisco.

Nura Maznavi is a civil rights attorney, writer, and Fulbright scholar. She lives in Chicago.

Healing in Ramadantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301a511e2303b970c2014-07-16T10:00:00-04:002014-07-15T13:40:49-04:00Mohammed Shamma, a contributor to 'Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy', remembers back to a Ramadan in 1982, when he was a young boy learning to heal from the loss of his father.Beacon Broadside

I’m a soccer addict. I love playing, watching, and following the “beautiful game” any chance I get. I inherited my love for the sport from my Egyptian father, who sat me down in our Texas home and told me what “football,” really was. He taught me about Pelé and Brazil, and of the great rivalry in his own country between the clubs Al-Ahly and Zamalek. He also taught me about the World Cup and Ramadan. And we can all agree that at least one of them is of great religious importance.

The World Cup and Ramadan aren’t always mentioned in the same sentence, but this year was different. The Islamic holy month started during the tournament’s knockout stage. In some ways, this was a fitting moment for the Muslim soccer players who had made it that far. They knew the Muslim world would be watching them as they pushed their bodies to their physical limits in the greatest moment of their careers. This was certainly the case for Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira of Germany, who helped seal German soccer supremacy for the next four years.

The last time Ramadan and the World Cup crossed paths was in 1986 and 1982 respectively. I’ll never forget the summer of 1982. I was in Egypt, visiting my father’s family on a much-delayed bereavement trip. My father had died of cardiac arrest in October of 1981. We buried him in a Muslim cemetery in Houston, Texas and had to wait eight months before we could visit our relatives in Cairo. Those eight months were tough on me, a nine-year-old boy who just lost his father, soccer coach, and mentor.

During the first few weeks in Egypt, I was sad and despondent. I was trying to forget my father, but he was everywhere. He was in the voices of people talking about the exciting matches, teams, and players. Wherever I went, I was introduced as Samir’s son, and each of my relatives had to tell me how close they were to him. People welcomed me as one of their own because of him. And, because of him, I felt out of place. I know they wanted me to feel at home, but it just wasn’t working. It was no way for a son to visit his father’s country.

Then my uncle arrived from Saudi Arabia. His arrival seemed to change the mood of our entire visit. He galvanized the family into a collective joy and was unanimously accepted as its de facto leader. He insisted that we spend Ramadan in Alexandria. He had already rented two apartments in the quiet beachside suburb of Maamourah and wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was the perfect place for a ten-year-old boy, devoid of cars, safe and small enough to explore on my own. I got by on my limited Arabic and would hop down to the local supermarket; buy a copy of “Archie and Friends,” Schweppes Lemon Soda, and a pack of chocolate cigarettes.

One day, on my way out of the supermarket, I paused and inspected the row of rusty old bicycles chained up in front. The proud shopkeeper caught me staring and insisted that I rent one of them. I told him I didn’t know how to ride a bike. He didn’t seem to care and told me to take the small one. Too scared to say no, I rented a bicycle suitable for a four-year-old and walked away dumfounded. I remember towering over the bike and straddling it as if it were a stool. I glided around the pavement without using the pedals at all. Then suddenly, I realized that I had somehow kept my balance. I tried again. It worked! Nervously I placed my left foot on the pedals and pushed. Score! I tried with both feet on the pedals. It was a little tricky, but I got the hang of it in a matter of seconds. I was riding a bike! The next day, I chose a slightly bigger bicycle. I was up and running in about five minutes. By the end of the week, I was riding a bike my very own size.

I’ll always remember that moment when I discovered I had learned how to ride a bike. I was alone, but I was happy. I had healed for the time being. With every Ramadan that comes and goes, I think back to those days in Maamourah. This year, during Ramadan, my six-year-old and I watched the World Cup together and I healed again, for the time being.

Pitfalls of a First Time Ramadan-ertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301a73de462b6970d2014-07-01T18:30:00-04:002014-07-02T09:16:12-04:00A contributor to 'Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy' recalls the difficult yet rewarding lessons of his first Ramadan, when he was still unprepared for the physical and spiritual rigors he would encounter.Beacon Broadside

When I discovered that I wanted to be a Muslim I don’t think I really knew what was involved. This was not for lack of knowledge about the religion but perhaps a lack of knowledge about myself, and a lack of knowledge generally. I knew that I would be required to kneel in submission to God five times a day, abstain from alcohol, along with a host of other minor ascetic measures. But when one actually finds himself in the throes of post-Shahada conversion, it becomes a different matter altogether.

I converted to Islam the previous spring, and spent the subsequent months in a frenzy of learning how to be a Muslim. So ensconced was I in the honeymooning phase with my new religion that one of the greatest obligations I have as a Muslim had crept up on me.

I was completely unprepared for Ramadan that first year. I had not prepared myself, physically or mentally, for the rigors of a month long fast. I was, in fact, still largely oblivious to what that entailed.

That year, Ramadan coincided with the holiday season. It was winter (how I long for those short days!). My family was entertaining, as we often did at that time of year. Our favorite foods were in abundance and were always at the tip of one’s fingers. The holiday season in our home was more of a grazing season since we were constantly shoveling food into our mouths, only vaguely aware most times that we were actually eating.

I recall instinctively plucking a slice of prosciutto from a platter, and subsequently stuffing it into my mouth. I even made sure to opt for the sparkling cider instead of the white wine, thinking to myself, “Nice save, John, you’re doing well.” Which is not to say that I didn’t know that prosciutto was pork, but that I had never really given it much consideration. How much do we really consider what our food is until we are forced to avoid it?

I was mortified, not only by having eaten pork, but by the sheer degree to which I had indulged. I had let God down. What’s worse, I had poisoned my body as well as my psycho-spiritual connection to the Almighty. Is it bad to say that I was also wracked with pangs of disappointment at having to scratch cured Italian meats off of my list of favorite foods? My dietary dilemma had become a full blown moral quandary. To my mind, at the time, not only was I assigning partnership with God, I was doing it with what Muslims believe, arguably, is one of the filthiest creatures on Earth. An internal struggle was being waged between my love for my religion and my love for prosciutto!

It took me a couple of days to reconcile myself with the prosciutto incident, and it wasn’t long after that that I encountered my next Ramadan pitfall.

In order to maintain some semblance of fitness I had modified my workout schedule. Gorging myself on pre-dawn Sohoors was making me put on weight, so I started going to the gym late at night and then praying and eating afterward. On one particular occasion, I had dozed off at my desk before having a chance to shower, pray, and then eat. When I woke up, the sun was already ablaze in the morning sky, which meant that eating was out of the question.

I couldn’t go to school smelling like a gym sock, so elected to take a shower. I was going to have to do a wudu (obligatory pre-prayer ablution) at some point anyway, and it wasn’t like no one in the history of Ramadan had ever showered during daylight hours. What I wasn’t prepared for was the temptation represented by the mere act of showering, my thirst evidently compounded by the workout and my lack of a pre-dawn meal. I stepped into the shower and let the water pour over me. I splashed water on my face and let it run over my head. Without thinking, I found myself ladling water into my mouth with two hands cupped together. I must not have been in my right mind at the time. Who else becomes so enamored with the act of drinking warm, hardened water, from what amounts to a giant tap.

When I finally came to my senses, I backed away from the shower head as though it were a djinn or a demon materialized in my bathroom to tempt me away from the straight path. I was dejected. I had succumbed. Again. Defeated by the seeming simplicity of a previous life. The things that I had taken for granted now represented a tangible threat to my immortal soul. Something as a simple as a shower or brushing one’s teeth had transformed into a potential exercise in hedonism.

I found my first few Ramadans fraught with such perils. They were nothing so grand as adultery or larceny or murder. Those things were obviously easy to avoid. It was the small things that caught me: unleashing a flurry of expletives at the guy making a left hand turn from a right hand lane (cursing and losing ones temper breaks one’s fast), smoking a cigarette (yes, I smoked in those days) because cigarettes do not constitute food or water, or buying turkey sausage I later learned was encased in pork intestine.

I was a lot more neurotic in those days. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be pitfalls that put me in perpetual fear for my immortal soul. As I matured as a Muslim, I came to realize that it was about one’s intent, something that many of us seem to forget. At some point intent must be followed up with action. And it occurs to me, as we approach this month of reflection, that there is a difference between stumbling in an attempt to do right, and justifying the means with the ends.

Am I a perfect Muslim today? No. But am I a better Muslim today than I was fifteen years ago. And I can’t help wondering if that’s all God really expects from us, to be better today than we were yesterday. If it is, then I expect many of us are doing ok.

How to Be Black and Muslim in "Post-Racial" Americatag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301a5116d003d970c2014-02-19T16:20:00-05:002014-02-19T12:19:39-05:00John Austin, a black American convert to Islam, describes the struggles for acceptance he's experienced and the path to peace he eventually found.Beacon Broadside

When I was eighteen, I stood in the quad at my university listening to another student emphatically protesting my atheism. I rolled my eyes dismissively as he, almost comically, pointed at a tree and explained how such a thing would not be possible without Allah. I listened, and watched, half interested for the next fifteen minutes as he repeated this exercise with everything in sight.

Much to my own surprise, less than five years later, I found myself in a masjid, reciting the Shahadah in front of an Imam.

Even before I went through the formal process of conversion I was apprehensive and anxious. I was worried about what my Southern Baptist family would say. I knew that their views of Islam, while largely uninformed, were very much in line with mainstream portrayals. Fortunately these concerns were completely unwarranted. Unfortunately my struggle with myself, my society, and my religion had not yet begun.

I converted to Islam at an age when most men are struggling to make sense of the world, and find their place in it. Being a young black man in the United States, this struggle was fraught with a host of perils.

My conversion, at that time, served to further complicate issues of identity that I struggled with. Having grown up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, I was already battling issues concerning my own identity as a black man. Most of my friends until university were white or Asian. The few friends I had that were also black, I could see, were silently struggling with similar issues. They were as desperate to fit in as I was, and the subject of blackness was never a topic of conversations. Even if it were, it would have been like the blind leading the blind.

As I grew into adulthood, my concept of my own identity, my own blackness, was largely defined by a series of negative encounters. Being pulled over while driving my mother’s brand new Audi through the affluent DC suburb of Fairfax. Listening to my AP English instructor tell my parents that I should consider vocational school, despite receiving high marks on essays. Being asked repeatedly by other students why I didn’t dress more ghetto, or act more black.

More black.

It would be easy to lay the genesis of these identity struggles at the feet of white adolescent high school students. And it would be easier still to vilify white people for the purposes of this story. The issues I’ve had to contend with are as much, if not more, a product of discrimination from my own kind as any other. Which is not to say my interactions with other African Americans were frequently negative, but that on the rare occasion when I was told that “You are not black enough” or “You talk like a white boy,” it stung more. It always hurts more when faced with rejection from your own. Perhaps because there is a native kinship that exists amongst us, because we are bound inextricably to one another by a common experience.

The black experience.

I was now not only an African American man. I was also a Muslim. A new cross-section in me had been created that I had to reconcile with. More invisible tightropes had been strung for me to navigate upon. No reconciliation was required between my blackness and my Muslim-ness. But the sum of those two things was seeking balance with my changed reality.

Though I wasn’t looking for a wife at the time of my conversion, I did immerse myself in the religion. I went to Friday prayers with a close friend, falsely believing that I would find fellowship there. I engaged other Muslims on campus at University, with lukewarm results. My attempts at connecting with Muslim communities online were far less forgiving. I can only guess that some people, emboldened with digital anonymity, were comfortable with words like khala, abeed, and tawa. I had to consult the few Muslim friends I had to even figure out what those words meant. But the fact that I know what they mean now is a testament to how frequently I’ve heard them used. Engaging with other black Muslims was no less of a challenge. Their particular gripes with me hadn’t changed even though my religion had.

I had not traded one form of rejection for another; I had compounded them. Like taking bricks made of rejection and stacking them one on top of another until a wall existed between myself and those whom I longed to be in the company of. Black. Muslim.

And then 9/11 happened.

I can’t tell you that much changed for me, as an individual, at that time. I wasn’t viewed with any more suspicion than usual. Women continued to clutch their purses and cross the street when they saw me late at night, much as they had before the towers fell. I continued to be pulled over without cause, though with less frequency, a fact that I attribute to not driving a brand new Audi. I was only ever stopped once in an airport and that was because I had lost fifteen pounds while out of the country and the customs officer wasn’t convinced my passport photo was me.

I didn’t change my name when I converted, so to the powers that be, I was simply John. My African American-ness, my blackness had shielded me from the worst Islamophobia had to offer. And in some ways, this only served to alienate me further from my fellow Muslims.

I could relate, through the lens of my own experiences as an African American. I could recount tales of “driving while black,” being observed with suspicion in department stores, and wondering whether or not I didn’t get a job because of my race. But many of those people with whom I tried to relate to through my own experiences were not interested. They were not interested in solidarity through “other.” They either simply wanted it all to go away, or they were too firmly ensconced in their own pain and struggle to see what was really happening.

I write all of this, not to say that I haven’t had my share of beautiful experiences, with Muslims from a variety of different backgrounds. I have. A friend’s mother has been insisting, since my conversion, that she find me a wife. A woman once approached me with her daughter’s business card and insisted that I call her. I’ve been invited to Iftars and post Tarawih coffee. I write this to highlight the fact that my experiences as a black Muslim have been every bit as challenging from within as they have been from external forces.

In Islam, judgment is one of the gravest sins you can commit. The reason being that only Allah (swt) can see what is truly in the heart of a person, that in His omniscience only He can see all that we say and do. Just as important is the idea that all things in the universe are as He wills and the act of judgment questions this, and by extension, Him. If judgment is a grave sin, then what is pre-judgment? Pre-judgment can be said to be an even graver sin, because we have rejected that which God has made, without having an informed opinion of it.

What I discovered during my ongoing journey through Islam is that I am no less guilty of these sins. By being so affected by these encounters I was passively buying into the judgments that were being made about me. I wasn’t accepting myself, and by not doing so, I was questioning that which God had created. Once I got it into my head that acceptance was the only thing that made any sense, acceptance of myself and others, life became a lot simpler.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Austin is African American/Japanese American. He converted to Islam fifteen years ago. He is a graduate of George Mason University and runs a small interactive design company in the Washington, DC, area. When not designing, he writes fiction and essays. Another essay on being black and Muslim appears in Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy, available now from Beacon Press.

Beacon Celebrates 30 Days of Lovetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301a73d7585fe970d2014-02-12T11:48:58-05:002014-02-11T16:27:49-05:00The 30 Days of Love Campaign is an interfaith project sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association that aims to "harness love’s power to stop oppression" through a combination of community activism and outreach.Beacon Broadside

This week is the final week of this year's 30 Days of Love, a project sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association that aims to "harness love’s power to stop oppression" through a combination of community activism and outreach. The annual effort is an outgrowth of Standing on the Side of Love, a movement that began in the aftermath of a tragedy: In 2008, two Unitarian Universalists were killed and several more seriously injured in a church shooting in Knoxville, Tennessee. Targeted because of their "liberal" values of acceptance, the congregation was flooded with support and messages of love from the greater Knoxville community, cementing the movement's core idea that love is the key to overpowering oppression.

Spanning from roughly Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to Valentine's Day, the 30 Days of Love campaign invites the community to take part during this "period of intentional action, service, education, and reflection" on themes of social justice, faith, and unification. This week's theme is "Pause, Reflect, Celebrate." In that spirit, and in the spirit of using love to conquer the ills of society, we present a few books that we hope will inspire you to pause, reflect, and celebrate the idea of using love as a force for greater good.

Sharon Leslie Morgan, a black woman from Chicago's South Side, is a descendent of slaves on both sides of her family. She began a journey toward racial reconciliation with Thomas Norman DeWolf, a white man from rural Oregon who descends from the largest slave-trading dynasty in US history. Over a three-year period, the pair traveled thousands of miles, both overseas and through twenty-seven states, visiting ancestral towns, courthouses, cemeteries, plantations, antebellum mansions, and historic sites. Gather at the Table is the chronicle of their journey.

As DeWolf and Morgan demonstrate, before we can overcome racism we must first acknowledge and understand the damage inherited from the past-which involves confronting painful truths such as the unhealed wounds of racism. This book is a revelatory testament to the possibilities that emerge when people commit to truth, justice, and reconciliation.

In Salaam, Love, Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi provide a space for American Muslim men to speak openly about their romantic lives, offering frank, funny, and insightful glimpses into their hearts-and bedrooms. The twenty-two writers come from a broad spectrum of ethnic, racial, and religious perspectives-including orthodox, cultural, and secular Muslims-reflecting the strength and diversity of their faith community and of America.

By raising their voices to share stories of love and heartbreak, loyalty and betrayal, intimacy and insecurity, these Muslim men are leading the way for all men to recognize that being open and honest about their feelings is not only okay-it's intimately connected to their lives and critical to their happiness and well-being.

In Faitheist, Chris Stedman makes a passionate argument that atheists should engage religious diversity respectfully. Becoming aware of injustice, and craving community, Stedman became a "born-again" Christian only to encounter staunch homophobia at a time when he was slowly coming to realize that he was gay. The great suffering he experienced might have turned Stedman into a lifelong "New Atheist." But over time he came to know more open-minded Christians and found that his disdain and hostility toward religion was holding him back from engaging in meaningful work with people of faith. And it was keeping him from full relationships with them-the kinds of relationships that break down intolerance and improve the world. As someone who has stood on both sides of the divide, Stedman is uniquely positioned to present a way for atheists and the religious to find common ground and work together to make this world-the one world we can all agree on-a better place.

As Rev. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his best-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail in July 1962. Having been arrested for holding a prayer vigil outside Albany City Hall, King and Ralph Abernathy shared a jail cell for fifteen days that was, according to King, ''dirty, filthy, and ill-equipped'' and "the worse I have ever seen." While behind bars, he spent uninterrupted time preparing the drafts for classic sermons such as "Loving Your Enemies," "Love in Action," and "Shattered Dreams," and continued to work on the volume after his release.

A Gift of Love includes these classic sermons, along with two new preachings. Collectively they present King's fusion of Christian teachings and social consciousness, and promote his prescient vision of love as a social and political force for change.

This year's 30 Days of Love campaign culminates on February 16 with Share the Love Sunday, when congregations and communities across the country are asked to celebrate the previous month's demonstrations of social justice, and remind themselves that, though this year's Month of Love may be nearly over, the gift of love has the power to transcend throughout the year. Read more about the 30 Days of Love campaign on their website, and find out what more you can do to stand on the side of love.